Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a game system, an information processing apparatus, a control method, and a recording medium, and particularly to an electronic game that makes use of inter-apparatus communication.
Description of the Related Art
Some of game apparatuses that execute game programs recorded in a predetermined recording medium, such as home-use game console and PCs, reflect information obtained through communication with another game apparatus in a game to provide. Such communication between game apparatuses is performed using various schemes, whether it is wired or wireless.
Delay occurs not only in communication between game apparatuses, but also in transmission/reception of data, in accordance with a transmission path. That is to say, when data is transmitted from one apparatus, another apparatus completes reception of the entire data after the elapse of a predetermined time period required for transmission. As a time period of delay in transmission/reception of data is extended and shortened in accordance with an amount of transmitted data, various techniques have been proposed as methods of structuring and transmitting/receiving data with a shortened time period of delay.
In addition, some game content requires update of game screens at a predetermined interval, whether or not there is delay in received data. With such game content, in a case where data is not received from another game apparatus within a time period prescribed as an update interval, data that is expected be received may be estimated from data received in the past, and reflection processing may be applied to a game based on the result of estimation (Japanese Patent No. 5357752).
In the case of game content in which reflection processing is applied to a game based on the estimation as in Japanese Patent No. 5357752, delay is compensated for by, for example, executing interpolation processing for ensuring consistency with data received after the reflection processing. In addition, as accumulation of differences from actual data owing to compensation for delayed data could possibly lead to processing failure, the differences may be reset at a predetermined timing so as to apply the reflection processing to the game that used received data without performing interpolation.
However, in a case where such interpolation processing, resetting of a difference amount, etc. are executed, the following problems could possibly occur. For example, consider the following situation: a plurality of players who use mobile game apparatuses are in a positional relationship where they can check each others' screens in real space, and the game apparatuses can independently execute the interpolation processing, resetting of a difference amount, etc. In this situation, for example, the following phenomena could possibly occur in a car racing game and the like: the rankings of cars operated by the players differ between the game apparatuses; and resetting of a difference amount causes a car of another player to suddenly appear in a place where it did not exist until then. Such inconsistency between the game apparatuses has a possibility of lowering the interest of the players.